


you're bad news (i don't care, i like you)

by staymonkey



Category: Hades (Video Game 2018)
Genre: But Oh Boy Do They Regard Each Other, Established Relationship, Flirting, General Disregard for Mortals, Is It Gay to Kill An Entire Athenian Household to Get Your Boyfriend's Attention?, M/M, Mild Gore, Overworked Thanatos, Pining, Short & Sweet, Teasing, Thanatos only likes murder gremlins and it's a problem, Underworked Ares, Wooing, flattery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:34:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28068624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/staymonkey/pseuds/staymonkey
Summary: Ares isn't easily ignored, no matter how hard Thanatos tries. (And maybe he doesn't try all that hard.)(edited 12/15/20)
Relationships: Ares/Thanatos (Hades Video Game), background Zagreus/Thanatos
Comments: 21
Kudos: 191





	you're bad news (i don't care, i like you)

**Author's Note:**

> i can't get over ares/thanatos and i won't get over ares/thanatos

* * *

Thanatos was exhausted.

Demeter’s grief had shrouded Greece in an unyielding winter that ravaged the mortal realm with impunity. The chill and starvation did not bring timely deaths, but such gentle deaths fell to Thanatos over his sisters, the Keres, all the same.

Hypnos should have been there, beside Thanatos. Death by cold was a death by sleep. The steady thump of their hearts would slow, and their eyes would grow heavy. Sleep should have claimed them, first. And only then, once they’d been lulled to rest, should Thanatos have reaped their souls with his scythe.

But ever since Nyx had untangled Hypnos’s fingers from her skirts, Hypnos struggled to maintain even the menial position Hades offered him. It’d been centuries; Hypnos was still adrift without Nyx, leaving Thanatos to shoulder the influx of souls alone.

Sleep could be delayed, Thanatos could not.

Without Hypnos, Thanatos reaped souls before they were fully due. The butterflies which fluttered from the recently deceased were weak, with pitiable wings that hadn’t had the opportunity to develop. Thanatos hated to take them, but he didn’t have a choice. It was worse to make them stay.

Even outside of divine cataclysms, winter always brought toiling, difficult work for Thanatos. Apollo _Akesios_ , his healing aspect, retired to Hyperborea in the winter, leaving the mortals vulnerable to illness that did not touch them quite so harshly in the spring and summer. Since Demeter had taken away the seasons, Apollo stayed in Hyperborea. Without Apollo, disease wracked the mortals, and the prolonged chill only further weakened them to its effects. Artemis could heal, like her brother, but she did not share Apollo’s gregarious affection for mortals, and for good reason. Mortal men had tried, and failed, to approach her with ill intent; and now she left them to suffer for their hubris.

Thanatos didn’t blame the Divine Twins. He didn’t blame Demeter or Hypnos, either. He was a daemon of death, it was not his place to assign judgment. He reaped souls, and that was all. 

But he was tired. He was so horribly, terribly tired.

Thanatos was a Deathless One, and couldn’t rest, not without extraordinary circumstances. Not without extraordinary _consequences_.

Still, he longed for the license to lay down his scythe, if only for a few hours.

His weariness was especially pronounced when he was called to the home of a eupatrid. He was not the only of Lord Hades’s retinue to have answered the call. One of his sisters, a Ker without a name, hunched with her face buried in the peeled apart chest cavity of a young man. She jerked from her spread when Thanatos’s bell tolled, but relaxed when she saw it was only him. She spoke to him, not in the gods’ tongue, but in clicks and trills that were wet with the blood on which she feasted. Thanatos understood all the same.

“You’ve taken more than your share again,” Thanatos chided. “This is beyond the Fates’ design.”

The Ker cocked her head and narrowed her deep set, pupilless eyes. She clicked.

“I’m sure,” Thanatos mused. “But the gore is unnecessary, even for your appetite. Never mind, I have a soul to reap and she isn’t in this chamber.” 

The Ker snapped at him irritably, but he thumbed the hilt of his sword and she settled with a disgruntled click. Then, shifting tactics, she trilled, shook out what she could of her matted hair so that it better framed her gaunt, bloodied face, and pouted.

Thanatos snorted.

“No, you can’t always have your way, even if you ask sweetly. The Fates have decided that her death will be peaceable, and so she is mine to collect. Take your hunger to them, not me.”

“And where do you bring _your_ hunger?” a deep voice called, from just outside the decedent’s chambers. Thanatos cursed Eros's name and swallowed the thrill that raced up his spine.

“Lord Ares,” Thanatos greeted, as Ares sauntered in, blood spatter dotting his white warpaint, an arrogant grin on his chiseled face. The black laurels crowning his head were askew, and Thanatos was overcome with the urge to straighten them.

“I’ve gifted you a soul to take,” Ares said. “This whelp’s mother,” Ares gestured to the fallen noble. The Ker clicked and stepped closer to the mangled body as if Ares would bicker with her over it. Ares paid her no mind; he was familiar with Thanatos’s sisters and their temperaments. “The poison she took with her wine will soon still her heart. She alone I allowed to die in this way; the rest of the household I slaughtered for your sister.”

“You shouldn’t have,” Thanatos said dryly.

“I wanted to see you,” Ares said, near bashfully. There was a spot of blood on his lip. Thanatos didn’t feast on blood like his sisters. He’d start, for Ares.

“You've created work where I already have plenty,” Thanatos retorted instead.

Ares's grin softened as he circled Thanatos, slowly. Caution was a terribly endearing look on insatiable War.

“That work has drawn you away from me,” Ares murmured. “You’ve left me to your sisters, but I’m already well acquainted with them. It’s you I’d like to study beneath.”

Thanatos’s face warmed with ichor, and he brought the hood of his cloak closer around himself to disguise his flush. “You’ve nothing to learn, Son of Hera,” Thanatos murmured, averting his gaze and turning away from Ares. “Except how to be less of a fool.”

Ares laughed, and the sound dripped like honey.

If Thanatos were anyone else, Ares might have been angry. But Ares had spoken those words first while unwrapping Thanatos from the sack that Sisyphus had unceremoniously stuffed him into; it was something of a joke between them now.

“You delight me, Death,” Ares crooned, “when so few do.”

Based on the sudden snapping of bone, the Ker had returned to her ghastly meal. Still, Thanatos didn’t tear his eyes from the pillar to which he’d fixed them, lest he accidentally gave Ares the pleasure of his attention.

When it became clear that Thanatos would not humor him yet, Ares spoke again. “Few ignore me like you,” he sighed wistfully. “Few could. My admiration for you only grows with your indifference.”

Thanatos longed for indifference. He felt so intensely for Ares, it was as if Ares had cleaved in Thanatos’s chest. Thanatos almost wished he would; it would feel gentler than the praise with which Ares teased him.

“You craft death with such artistry,” Ares carried on. “I act with ill-restrained strength, inartful fury. When I strike, those beneath me die spoiled by their desperation. Even when they come to me resigned, there is restless defiance about them that spices their meat for the Keres. But _you_ ,” Ares drew close to Thanatos, close enough that Thanatos felt the heat of him at his back, “you lull your kills into _complete_ submission. The irresistible, inevitable, irrevocable finality of death.” 

Thanatos shuddered.

“Fine, you brute," he yielded. "You’ve won. With underhanded tactics, mind you." With a boisterous laugh, Ares swept Thanatos into his arms, but Thanatos unfurled his wings and teleported to stand beside the Ker, his arms crossed indignantly. The Ker started with a discordant squawk.

“Come now!” Ares scowled boyishly. “Where's your sportsmanship? You conceded our little game.”

“I did,” Thanatos huffed, even as affection bubbled in his chest. “But you can’t just snatch me like you would a nymph. I’ve my dignity to maintain, Lord Ares.”

Ares grinned. “Of course, Death. But don't deny me my spoils, if I really have won as you said.”

Thanatos rolled his eyes and set his scythe against a pillar. Taking that for the implicit permission that it was, Ares followed him across the room and circled an arm around Thanatos’s waist, loosely this time. Ares cupped Thanatos’s jaw and caught his gaze with the same fiery intensity with which he approached anything.

“You used to have a sense of humor, you know,” Ares sulked.

Thanatos reached up and straightened Ares’s laurels. “Humor is for Olympians, who lay waste to households to distract well-meaning daemons from their important work.”

“Not just any household,” Ares insisted. “A very important household. This is a gift, nothing petty or frivolous.”

“You're incorrigible. Sometimes I think it would be easier if you thought as little of me as the other Deathless Ones,” Thanatos murmured, glancing down at that spot of blood on Ares’s lip again.

The Ker, having had her fill of their antics, abandoned the thoroughly mutilated man whose blood stained the soles of their sandals. She scuttled from the room, her talons clicking against the stone tile.

“I can’t leave her to her own devices, Ares,” Thanatos murmured. “She’ll take that woman if I don’t first. The Keres forget their place.”

“I know about the Keres,” Ares said. “And she’ll find plenty of enticing, violently killed souls to rend well before she manages to find the aristocrat’s mother. I’ve left her a feast fit for Dionysus’s retinue.” 

“There are others,” Thanatos insisted, gripping Ares’s chiton as if Ares were the one threatening to leave. “My work is never finished as of late. Won’t be, not so long as Lady Demeter mourns.”

Ares kneaded his fingers into the curve of Thanatos’s back. Thanatos closed his eyes and rested his head on Ares’s shoulder, sinking into Ares’s embrace.

“I’ve never known exhaustion like this,” Thanatos added faintly. 

“Then rest,” Ares murmured into Thanatos’s hair. “Pretend to be anyone other than who you are, and rest in my home until you can bear to take up your scythe again.”

“The last time I dared rest in your realm,” Thanatos said, “your son pricked me with one of those horrible arrows of his. And I haven’t been able to rid myself of you ever since.”

Ares laughed, and Thanatos melted into the sound.

“You needn’t be rid of me. I'll only have you for as long as you're be willing to be had,” Ares promised.

Thanatos wanted to resent how easily Ares felled him, but he couldn’t muster the energy.

“Allow me to collect the soul I came here for,” Thanatos conceded, “and then I will consider your proposal. I’d need an excuse, for Lord Hades. I've stretched his good graces thin, helping my other impulsive, reckless lover in his efforts to escape.”

“You certainly have a type,” Ares agreed readily enough, and Thanatos snorted. “I’ll ensure any blame falls to me. I can take Lord Uncle Hades’s anger; I’d take a volley of arrows if it meant you’d fall into my arms, even if only for a moment.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Thanatos mused, glancing up. “You can’t bear pain; I’ve seen you fall apart over a mere scratch against your divine flesh.”

“You wound me more than any spear could,” Ares grumbled, and Thanatos laughed, like bells. He cupped Ares’s jaw.

“I’m sorry,” Thanatos murmured, tilting Ares’s face, and brushing his lips against Ares’s. “Should I supplicate for your forgiveness?”

Ares kissed him instead, and Thanatos decided that, if only for a moment, his work could wait.

**Author's Note:**

> are you ever so tired that you flirt with your sometimes lover in front of your feral sister while she's trying to eat?
> 
> give me attention like I'm thanatos and you're ares in the comments! (or don't, if you don't have time to pine for centuries.)


End file.
